(Rough transl: Speak words that touch the chords of the heart. Words that reach out to calm the hearts of others while calming your own soul)

Those of us who were born in the early 80s or prior to that must have known the era of debates and the existence of debating clubs, coffee houses, and public lecture halls. This was the era before we went thoroughly virtual living nosier lives on social networking sites than in real-time. Debating clubs were a rage in universities. A university gained fame by its debating champs — some of whom went ahead to define the political and legal landscape of the country. In fact, the university systems and their strengths were sometimes defined by the debating groups existing within their premises. Look at the history of Patna University, Allahabad University, Benaras Hindu University, Delhi University, etc. and you will understand what am I trying to indicate. Oxford University still hosts one of the best annual debates in its campus as per the traditional debating club style.

How far do these clubs go back in time? In my assessment to the times when Nalanda and Takshasila were the ruling universities. This assessment comes from a cursory analysis of Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s popular series Chanakya which was telecasted back in early 90s. There is an episode when Vishnugupt Chanakya speaks at Kaikayaraj about the ideal teachers and their role in nation building. That speech qualifies as an excellent example of flash-extempore.

There is another episode where Chanakya debates with the 16 regional Janapada kings , including the king of Magadha; Dhanand for a united action against Alexander. In my opinion, those debates confirm to the high standards of debating ethics that scholarship can ever produce.

The best forms of debate have been a part of university systems and consequently parliamentary systems. Some of the State Governments have former debating champions of the state universities as their helmsmen/women. There are a few points which I remember from my grandfather and my school teacher’s tips on how to be good debator. Actually, these ‘hows’ are very subjective and defined by individual attitudes and disposition. I do not exactly remember, who said which point to me but I am re-framing those tips in my own words and in ways that I can think of. These tips I now share as a mixed bag with you all. They had come to me when I was only 9-10 years old:

1. Respect your opponents and their thoughts and points.

2. Make a blue-print of your battle strategy before you actually fight it.

3. Listen, and listen carefully if you want to win — you get your trump card from your opponent.

4. Speak with substance not just with passion.

5. Never lose your grounds or change your ideologies just because you are losing the championship.

6. Speak from your soul not from your mind — mind is only an equipment of the soul. People usually see through your intentions.

7. Be silent for 15-30 secs before you start speaking — that gives you strength to handle your thoughts.

8. Be coherent rather than intellectual.

9. Think of the usefulness of your arguments — do not argue just for the sake of an argument.

10. Be courteous, dignified, and make a statement with your actions not just with verbose.

I am aware that English teachers will pick these points up from Iris and freely talk to their students as if these points are their original statements. Well, that is the reason why I am sharing these trade-secrets on Iris.

There are some very interesting movie clips that I recollect where musical debates between the boy and girl lead to a new love story. Remember Sachin and Ranjeeta’s famous debate song based on Kabir’s Dohas in Ankhiyon ke Jharokhon Se? Whenever I listen to that song it gives me a high — education and pedagogy seemed to be determined by the quest for knowledge rather than the quest for hefty pay-packets:

Traveling across the continent, British debates are known for their humour, wit and sharp repartee. Citing an instance, there is a joke of a repartee between the famous parliamentarians William Gladstone and Disraeli during one of the British parliament debates. Attacking Disraeli, Gladstone had remarked “the honorable gentleman will either end on the gallows or die of some loathsome disease”. Disraeli replied immediately during his turn in the debate, “That depends on whether I embrace the honorable gentleman’s principles or his mistresses” .

On the whole debates, debating clubs, are the mark of a country’s and an academia’s intellectual capital. In India somehow traditional university systems have lost their debating sheen and IITs do not seem to have encouraged their debating champs as much as they should have. As a PG student, I used to enjoy watching the annual debating championships in the university. Never dared to participate at the PG level because I knew the limitations of my verbal capacities. There are no inter-IIT debating championships and neither are intra-IIT debating groups that remarkable in establishing their presence. I envision that someday inter-university National debating championships would be held so that we witness history being rewritten.

Perhaps, this is an utopia…but I am not pessimistic about the reality of this utopia. On that note let me make a cuppa hot-ginger tea….For my readers who are dissapointed about my not writing on love stories — will be back soon with a love story as my 100th article.

Goodnight! Take care of yourselves and do debate with your ideas and ideologies 🙂 ….

A new season of IIT aspirants, a new bunch of wide-eyed, anxious parents, a new set of questions regarding the credibility of “IITs” as a system, a new range of doubts about pay-packets and lack of student interest….Somehow, we do not tire of talking, writing or thinking about IITs.

At least I do not….I will not give facts and figures in this article, will just debate the gossips from the grape-vines of academia. It’s been a three month long break from Iris. Have missed connecting with you all over this long hiatus. Someday if time and space permit me and if I am really able to narrate, will narrate the stories of the past three months.

All through my life, I have been a rather boring talker and more of a curious listener who picks-up bits and pieces of drawing room conversations and sometimes weaves stories of them. There are no doubt a lot of valid points in these drawing room chats — some of which are meant as harmless gossips to be heard and forgotten. These drawing-room conversations are not always baseless — they are symptomatic of deeper issues that people would perhaps not discuss in a formal setup.

As someone who has been on both sides of the table: as a student and immediately after graduation as a faculty in the IIT system (believe me it hasn’t been any easy :)), mostly I am in a state of confusion when writing “objectively” about a mega-system like an IIT. Let me confess my own subjective biases for the system even before I start writing. This article is a refusal to defend — but I would like to present my own picture of the glossy and not-so-glossy side of this system as I have experienced it as a student and then as a faculty.

Recently, in one of the drawing-room conversations, a friend pointed-out that IITs are “not” the best in education and that “these engineers” are lop-sided and often “superficial” in their views and overhyped. They are not aware of social, and cultural issues, and it’s only the money that keeps them glued to whatever they are doing. Additionally, there is the lack of “sheen” in IITs. There is a dip in the pay-packets and students are unnecessarily pressurized from school days to get into the IITs by parents. Further, there is a lack of interest in students to read and learn — the pressure of “making” into an IIT is so high, that the post-burden of courses and education weigh high upon them.

There are no doubt some valid aspects of these points. However, I have a strong disagreement with some of these points. Especially, when people in responsible positions including bureaucrats talk about these issues without giving the psychological dimensions a thought, it portrays a sad picture of the story.

I did not bring myself to argue in the drawing room scenario deliberately, but was making mental notes of these points so that will be able to discuss them on Iris. These points might be also doubts that come into the minds of a bulk of our population.

The first aspect that comes to mind is the young age that students start preparing for IIT-JEEs. Perhaps, class 8th or 9th and for some it is class 6th or 7th. We come across this issue of parents forcing their children to make into IITs and after that being extra-possessive about their daughters/sons when they graduate. While there is a lot of truth in these statements, let us not forget that IITs are perhaps singularly the only system that have catered to the dreams of an average “middle-class” or “lower-middle class” Indian family to give a high-end education to their children. Some of their children graduate to be the who’s who of Silicon Valley while some get into graduate studies at the best places of the world, including the majority of Ivy league colleges. The amount that a young IIT graduate earns at the age of 24-25 (including those with the least pay-packets) has been beyond the dream of some of their entire family’s income collectively put together. The gap of pressure and performance in IITs do not in my opinion come from parents only, it comes from the gaps in the economic standards of two generations. Moreover, the lack of public awareness for education, the complete ignoring of some of the promising pedagogic disciplines that have gone into disuse over time, and the lack of interest in alternative learning systems account for this excessive obsession that Indian population has for IIT admissions.

What is the average pay-packet of IITians? In our conversation people discussed the “low” pay-packets and the dipping placement scenario. I would say — that is pure fiction. Those of us who have been through the grind and who have witnessed the depressing placement seasons at IITs (I mean depressing because friends suddenly turn competitors during these seasons) are made to realize time and again the value of money. IITs have been a few among institutions that have survived the onslaught of recession. The average monthly income of an individual in India is Rs. 3000 (Courtesy: Express India). While in older IITs people crib about a 22 lakh package as “less than” their friend’s 29-30 lakh package, in the new IITs the scene will begin to clearly emerge after two or three batches start moving out and the alumni base starts strengthening itself with the pool. In an article in the “Economic Times” of December 2011, the highest gross package of an IITian in 2011 placements have been accounted as 75 lakhs (< http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-12-03/news/30471827_1_iit-campuses-final-placement-n-ramesh-babu&gt;) . I am quoting money and placements here because perhaps that is something that immediately strikes an average thought.

It would also depend on how the young breed of faculty define a clear goal for their own IITs and steer the institutes along those directions. As far as my study goes, in the older IITs like Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras and Delhi, the first generation faculty members had a clear defined goal set for their institutions: to set-up a high-end undergraduate technical education that would match the best among the international standards. That was clearly achieved over fifty years time. But now what? Where to go next? We keep talking about “research” without getting into the dynamics of teaching and research.

In the Indian scenario, there is a strong political and public apathy when an institution over-reaches itself and establishes its autonomy beyond the state unlike the United States where an institution becomes a public pride if it does great work. I am citing the example of United States because Indian academia of late has been trying to follow a lot of the “US model”. This has been the fate of many brilliant Indian universities (I am deliberately not naming them) in the past . We go by the casual “chalta-hai” attitude and our ways are more of empty critiquing than constructive suggestions to build a system. We pull down systems with empty procrastination rather than building them.

IITs are in a crucial cusp at this moment which would define their position in the long run, and instead of following models if they develop their own model of education, then perhaps the entire South-Asia would have something to talk-of in terms of an educational capital. My limited thought is a strong PhD base along with an equally strong undergraduate teaching.It is only over the last few years that people have started recognizing the economic benefits attached to a PhD degree in India. The time when we have the brightest of our undergraduate IITians or Central University students or high-end private engineering college students joining for research at an IIT instead of opting for a university abroad, I would consider that as the beginning of a new era of success and as the process of “rebranding”. The other part would consist of public support and more of research initiatives that would be of use to India in whatever possible ways. An institution should emerge as pride for the people that it serves.

As far as the lack of emotional, social, and cultural awareness in IITians (specifically “engineers”) are concerned, I would say that perhaps some of the best known names in writing and theater at this moment are from these institutions. It’s not one institution, the common sentiment among students all over the world is a lack of an appetite for reading or for socio-cultural issues. History says that there have been motivating teachers behind a successful student (king in the ancient times). A Chanakya was responsible for making a Chandragupta, an Upagupta was responsible for a converted Ashoka. It is not information that creates responsible students in my opinion, it is rather your attitude towards life and academics. How we create that attitude would more or less depend on us. Moreover, let us accept that the basic training in IITs are to make “good engineers”, how we add the responsive and emotionally balanced and honest individual to that list, would depend more or less on us as friends, parents, society, and teachers.

Recently, I was dusting my cupboard at home. Papers, pencils, birthday cards, notes, school diaries, textbooks, teachers’ signed examination papers tumbled out of the cupboard. I was actually thinking that how stupidly sincere and stereotypically ‘good girl’ I was over the years. I was flooded with texts and small things that took me back to school days and early college years. Hunting through the dust, grime, and brown-pages I was rather surprised how your past gets preserved in some closet of your present. It also amazed me how our own handwriting changes as we mature through the stages of life.

While cleaning up these stuffs, I came across many birthday cards that were given to me over the years by friends at school, college and university. One of the cards possibly given to me in class 7th or 8th has a picture of the kids in the then popular series ‘Wonder Years’. Came across the first Friendship Day card that I got possibly during college years — was trying to remember the name, who it was (the card was anonymous as expected) who gave the card, but just couldn’t recollect the name. Found an old CD with a calligraphic handwriting, mentioning in zinc-laden pen, ‘It’s only words and words are all I have…’.

Some of the gifts wrapped in the covers also kind of amazed me — a writing pad with water-mark of roses still remains unwritten, a small scrap-book with signed statements from friends regarding how bright our future will be and the forever-ness of our friendships; some of the junk earrings given to me by friends at school remain so carefully wrapped, that they have got dark and soot-laden with time but are still beautifully preserved.

School uniforms, hair-bands, dolls, all tucked up inside the closet tumbled at me one after the other, filling me with a strong desire to re-live my past, with a wish to set those things right that I have possibly messed-up as a part of growing-up. But, time as and when it goes, remains irretrievable. What did I do with these things that came off the closet? Well, this time I donated a lot many of those that could be used and the rest I just destroyed them — memories in the form of materials and objects can be disposed off if they are causing you pain.

One of these days, I was back in touch with an old friend, a very close friend of college years with whom I had been out of communication for years. After a few days of happy reunion and old-timer recollection, we realized that it was not working out — we all are very different people now who should lead our lives and keep ourselves as memories to be cherished in each others’ thoughts rather than as real people trying to be present in our present.

From the old closet, I found a poems diary of my school days. Those were the times when I seriously dreamt of being a poet — while friends were dreaming of IITs, engineering, medical, I lived in the dream of being a poet, and seriously took-up the task of writing. In fact, in 10+2 when the rest of the class was struggling with coaching and preparations, I sat dreaming, of what, I have still not been able to figure out, and those dreams found an expression in my diary through poems.

Feel like sharing with you, a poem that I must have written during my class 12th summer vacations. If I look at it now as a literary and linguistic expert, it would appear plain silly. However, what struck me in that poem is the feeling of a search, which is strikingly similar to my inner-most search even now. It was possibly titled as ‘Unseen Presence’ and following are the lines:

When the rose like red lips of the last sun-rays,

Give their final smile and close over the darkening horizon.

When a strange fragrance of summer flowers,

Weighs heavily in the air.

When the dark night,

Plaited with moon and stars,

Shows its mystery and magic.

When the light breeze,

Sings to an unknown music-

In an evening as such,

I dream of You so much!

But You! Who are You?

I’ve neither seen You,

Nor have I ever heard You!

But who are You,

That is my hidden strength?

You- who are always hidden in the darkness of the night,

And in the glamour of the hot day.

I can see You not-

But can feel You,

Like the perfume of incense in the air,

And like the sweetmeats,

Sold in the village fair.

You! Whoever you are!

Whether very near,

Or too far-

I crave for You in the temple of my heart….

I must have been only 16-17 years when I wrote that poem, but the feeling seems so organic and unsullied. Interestingly, am yet to figure out the ‘you’ that I was searching for from those years.

Recently, a student mentioned that I should be writing some spicy-masala blogs, not the usual boring things that I write — something that has sports, love, scandal, movies etc. as its theme. He suggested that the TRP of Iris needs to improve with time and there should be a change now with an emphasis on the commercial appeal of the blog. What do you all say? Should we change the track of Iris? Add some commercial stories? Let me know your thoughts.

I started my stint as a teacher after leaving IIT B, quarreling with Aristotle and with a class of amazingly curious wide-eyed undergraduate technocrats who have possibly lived and breathed Eckert, Cerf, Shannon, Computer vision, Micro-controllers, fiber-optics, and TCP/IP . Today I look back upon my first anniversary as a teacher — and I celebrate 🙂 . As an individual transforming from the eternally defiant student to the other side of the table it was sudden and at times excruciating because of my set principles and comfortable casting zone in the cool role of a student.

Traveling over the past one year through the length and breadth of the country’s educational institutions has been an eye-opener — students are similar as well as extremely unique in their own ways. Only through teaching and interaction does one understand these similarities and uniqueness. As I review the past one year, it surprises me that I have lived and experienced three educational institutions — two of them being new IITs and one LNMIIT, Jaipur. Last July, when I started teaching a course in Indian Literature at LNMIIT, I circulated a poster with some pictures to make the course popular. I began with 3 students — no one wanted a new teacher and a course that might not give them adequate credits. Girls from 2nd year (I remember their names 🙂 ) came asking me: “what are you planning to do with us? How will you execute the course?” It instantly struck me as “WOW! I had not done this in my student days!” And thus started the journey…from 3 students, we moved to 12 in the first week, and finally the class got locked at 28.

Life for the past one year has taken such a dramatic turn that it is difficult to sometimes collate the theoretical and praxical aspects that it offers. Being a teacher has been perhaps the only thing that brought some degree of satisfaction in a chaotic, whirlwind, drama-queen kind of life that Anne chose through the last one year in an attempt to find her identity in the wilderness of brand IIT. Last time when I visited IIT B, some friends (PD in particular) mentioned that I should keep notes of my classes and the experiments that the entire class gets involved in, for posterity. However, that’s tough for a particularly lazy character. This blog post is a series of short experiential notes on my role as a teacher and the theoretical and praxical angles involved in teaching. There is a disclaimer attached here — this post is not a prescriptive model and I don’t claim through this post that i have been successful as a teacher. My experience in this field is far too short and the challenges are many.

My first class started with a quarrel with Aristotle’s quote cited at the beginning of this article. Actually, I must admit (citing my sources for my students) that I was inspired by the movie Legally Blonde and the movie had a deep impact on my psyche before I went for research 🙂 .Being a rule breaker myself, accepting Aristotle’s ideas has been tough. It was difficult to convince the class that Aristotle’s opinion might be just one among many opinions and that — “Law without passion is no law”. Law-makers of the world are perhaps (including the great Aristotle himself) the most passionate of professionals. Similarly, literature or technology without passion is neither literature nor technology in my opinion…. Questions were many from the class and the skepticism in the tone of the 28 proved that they were tough-nuts to crack. As students (including me) we take for granted that if someone is of the stature of Aristotle then he/she ‘MUST BE RIGHT’. The perils of passive acceptance are innumerable and questioning cliches and norms do not come easily to us who have been taught right from our childhood ‘NOT TO QUESTION ELDERS’ 🙂 . However, Aristotle made it sure that the entire semester was not going to be an easy run either for the teacher or the students. For the first time in my life, I was learning that multidisciplinary studies (which was my favourite dictum as a student) is easier said than done. Teaching literature to technologists is not a cake walk. If they are not interested then you are doomed, if they are interested then too you are doomed 🙂 . Parth had asked me the day I went for my job presentation, “Ma’am how does one write a novel?” I am still attempting to find an answer to that question :).The number of texts that we chose to read baffled us at the end of the semester. But there was a common element that kept us united as a class — PASSION to learn and drive to know. We explored the length and breadth of Indian literary history through the course of this semester.

There are a few interesting anecdotes that will always bring a smile — these anecdotes basically relate to the complete anesthetic feeling that modern educational systems insulated in boundaries of disciplines have inculcated in us. We live in the comfortable boundaries of disciplines created by our standardized egos — ‘I am a Humanities Person’, ‘I am a Computer Scientist’, I am a technocrat’. These students for the first time broke my own ego quotient as a humanities researcher. As a teacher, I observed that when these boundaries are suddenly broken, the impact is either that of a complete cultural shock or pure enlightenment ecstasy. For instance, the class was reading “Champak Blossoms” from Sarojini Naidu’s Golden Threshold. I was trying really hard to explain the joy of smelling the first blossoms of Champak flowers explored by Naidu in her poems. The joy of such an experience seemed a little far-fetched for these hardcore computer or electronics students, some of whom perhaps never have seen a Champak tree in their lives. The humdrum of labs and core-subject problems and before that the massive load of JEE entrances have made these young minds insulated to the subtle aspects of life. Nikhil immediately asked me: “Ma’am how does a Champak flower look like?” What was implied in his question is that “poets are boring to find pleasure in smelling and then writing about Champak flowers” 🙂 . We decided to search and look at the Champak flowers after the class. I knew that the champak blossoms were aplenty in the campus and it wasn’t difficult to find one near the academic area. The entire class after the class-hour stood by the corridor while Nikhil and I saw the Champak blossoms :D. Nikhil decided to pluck a few Champak blossoms and smell it. I and the others of the class were also presented some of these blossoms by Nikhil 🙂 . Suddenly the watchman came running after Nikhil, but he was extremely puzzled and nonplussed when he saw the rest of the class, including me standing and happily smelling the Champak blossoms in the corridor! 😀 The purpose was experiential learning — we tend to learn fast from experience. Probably, a lifetime of explaining Naidu wouldn’t have worked the wonders that smelling those Champak flowers did.

I have been fortunate as a teacher — because I was given the liberty by the directors, colleagues, and the students especially who have been teaching me while learning from me. Tagore and Gitanjali is another such anecdote. Reading Tagore is not an easy job. I just barged into my director’s office and requested him to let me have open-air classes, outdoor classes — he was a bit puzzled for a second and then smiled said, “it is your class and your call” . Then on, Tagore happened in the lawns outside and I have never in my life enjoyed reading Gitanjali the way we did during those months of September-October in the slight drizzle and with the breeze blowing outside, creating an ambiance that perhaps Tagore himself might have had when he was composing these verses in the forests near Silaidaha. As a class we were rhythmically and collectively experiencing the joy of creativity that Tagore’s profound verses offer. I was myself taught Tagore within the boundaries of a classroom, but got a chance to experience Tagore as the eclectic philosopher-poet for the first time in so many years.

Nived, and some others came up with the title “Creatineers” for this small but extremely lit-savvy group. We organized RAP sessions in some evenings where we spent hours in the cabal mode talking, discussing, and listening to creative pieces either self-composed or else from famous poets and authors. Dheeraj would always run to the city to get cakes, pizza and goodies 🙂 . In fact, last time when I got a chance to visit Jaipur for a day we had our 5th RAP session the night before I left. We continued well unto midnight reading and listening — they made my gloomy evening lively and full of joy.

A few days ago I called up my thesis supervisor and joyfully informed him, “Sir, Naman and Tanjul’s papers have got accepted in an international conference! Sir, they are my 3rd year computer science students!” He was overjoyed, and said “My blessings to my academic grand-children Anne! I am their academic Taaa taaa” 🙂 . That day I realized the joy that he must have felt when my first paper got accepted in an international conference — hmmm, experiential learning.

Being a teacher for researchers has been a different experience altogether. We learn to question our needs through these sessions. The modes that researchers communicate in are unique and that’s what we have been trying to understand in a joint effort in the class. As a scholar myself (not very long ago), I understand the difficult job of “unlearning”. We have been collectively trying to unlearn in these classes. I won’t divulge anymore details about the research classes except the fact that no amount of theory can ever equate itself with ‘do it yourself’ mode.

Nostalgia is not a great virtue. However, I am continuously transported across time to my own student days and cannot resist narrating stories from those times. In the first year of my PG, a new faculty joined our department. That was his first class with us (well, he still remembers my defiant manners). He was teaching us “Metaphysical Poetry” (a favourite subject) and John Donne. I was chewing a gum and had an ancient copy of the “Metaphysical Poets” in my hand. The teacher saw the book on my desk while he was reciting the poem. Out of curiosity he asked me, “library copy?” I looked up and gave him a stubborn look and nodded. He was even more curious, “where did you borrow this from?” I looked back at him in slight contempt and slight defiance and replied dryly with the gum still in my mouth: “No I have INHERITED it! That’s my grandpa’s!” So soon have the wheels of time moved and the tables turned 🙂 ….

Time flies and I have realized that none of the teaching theories match with the moment when as a teacher you walk up to the teaching aisle and when you face the thirty odd eyes tearing you apart, questioning you, testing you, and eager to learn from you, and teach you.You have to really want to be there if you want to be there. Teaching is not for the fainthearted and again I would fight with Aristotle that “laws of teaching have to be free from passion” 🙂 . Without passion a teacher is only an instructor. One of these days Ajay was chatting with me on Facebook and he shared, “Ma’am if I ever become a teacher I am going to start my class with that quote from Aristotle” …. I consider that statement as my greatest reward ever.

It’s 2 am now and I am listening to an old favourite, a song of Bob Dylan that uncannily matches my post here, ‘Times they are a Changin'” :

“Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don’t criticize What you can’t understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin’ Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand For the times they are a-changin’” — From Times They Are A Changin’

(This article is dedicated to my students at IIT Indore, LNMIIT, The Creatineers, and IIT Gandhinagar)

As the cab moved through the gullies of Mumbai towards the domestic airport something snapped inside. The feeling of leaving behind all that I acquired for the past five years gnawed at my heart….

Rain clouds blurring the evening sky

Long ago, I had written an article named ‘Sunrise to Sunrise: a Day’s Work at IIT’ . This post is going to be diametrically opposite to the earlier posts on IIT and life at IIT. For those of you who are waiting for a sequel to the Koraput travel article, you’ll have to wait a little longer because I felt an urgent need to note down the feeling of a researcher leaving IIT after graduation lest I forget the entire confusing web of emotions. Actually, the world which rests on ‘moving on’ funda won’t be able to connect with my article because this is going to be “senti” and a “tear-jerker” in the language of any IITian. But then…. 🙂

Remember the 1967 Hollywood blockbuster ‘The Graduate’ directed by Mike Nichols and written by Charles Webb? Remember the confusion and fixity of Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) a 21 year old graduate who tries to search for himself within a confusing web of relationships, search for ‘true’ love and the problems of ‘what next’? Remember Simon and Garfunkel’s haunting track ‘Sounds of Silence’? If you haven’t seen the movie — must watch. Well! Not all graduating souls have as dramatic a life as Benjamin, but that doesn’t make life on the whole any less dramatic. To be 21 and a graduate is so different from being in late twenties or thirties and graduating. This post aims to search for that drama in the mundane life of a graduating IITian researcher. But how do you locate drama in the life of people who are deprived of friends and maybe hunting for the ‘right’ job or boy/girl or maybe attempting to negotiate through the excruciating demands of research and marriage? Well! I don’t really have an answer….

Silhoutte of Hostel-11 in the Evening

When the packers come and carry your things — little trinkets and small nothings which you have gathered over the last many years of your stay in the hostel, you feel so badly possessive for each of them. You start feeling the new chaos regarding where do you, your ideas and your things fit into the world. I shall never forget those last few moments of hostel life when I was trying to ‘un-knot’ and pull down my yellow curtains from the large glass windows of my hostel room. A close friend kept packing my things and dumping all the remnants of five years into my bag as if to make the ordeal simpler for me. There is something really ironical about leaving IIT — you leave people or are left behind by people. The entire process of staying and leaving (hopefully with a graduation) is like meeting a portion of ‘real life’ and if you are perceptive enough you realize that life is about packing things (both literally and emotionally) and walking out. The workers and cleaning staff of Hostel-11 kept smiling and praying for me — “didi! aap kab aaoge next?” When I had entered IIT I had come alone with dreams in eyes, graduating from IIT again the walk is alone (except for a few very hard-earned friends and memories) and some of those dreams are still left unrealized. There are a few things that people like us needed to learn from people and their life @ IIT — to take it easy, to hide emotions and try behaving as if we are great assets to the country. Well, this post will be a massive let down for such people. As IITians there are many of us who are yet to learn the quality of emotional and individual honesty and commitment before deciding to ‘sacrifice’ our lives for social and national goals.

The problems of an average researcher at IIT ranges from handling their research topics to library surveys to equation with thesis supervisors to interpersonal relationships and marriage if you are not married or issues of marriage if you are married. It is my personal experience that by the time you negotiate through the alleys of research and the issues of personal life and reach the stage of graduation you become rather dispassionate about things and become a distant observer of life and the passage of events. For many, the moment of submission and the moment of defense brings elation and joy. Talking about my personal experience, when I saw the black-bound gold embossed cover of my thesis and turned a few pages of it I felt a distance, as if I never wrote all those pages in my life, as if someone else was doing all that running around and writing business and as if those five years were spent by someone else — someone who is a stranger, maybe an alter-ego, maybe a magic spell….

During those final moments of ‘good-byes’ with friends, hostelites, teachers and my supervisor I felt a strange emptiness in heart. Especially meeting my research guide was a completely different experience. He was the same person whom I had been meeting for the past five years every morning and afternoon for work and for the thesis. Now, with the last chais at KRESIT the ticking of the clock became heavier. There is a novel of William Faulkner called Sound and the Fury where this ticking of the clock of a character Quentin’s life is dealt in a very strong sense. Somewhere those good-byes kept reminding me of the times past and the ticking of the clock for the future seemed more aggressive and vehement.

I am not sure if every researcher feels the same feelings that I am documenting in my post. We all are different from each other — some have the dire need to break the boundaries of confinement set by research and the last few days for them are just a necessity which has to be lived through. Some of us have outlived the place and need to seek new modes of being imprisoned. However, life is not without confinement — there is no true freedom. In the language of one of my teachers’ ‘freedom is the necessity to chose one’s own bondage’ . Some of us have chosen our bondage and some of us are bound to choose a new confinement — but no one can deny that confinement.

As the cab moved towards the airport, the radio sang out: “Zindagi ke safar mein guzar jaatein hain jo mukaam woh phir nahin aate! (Roughly: those small destinations that move through as the journey of life moves on, never come back)” I looked out as the rains lashed through the black-yellow cab window and caught a glimpse of the last landmark of IIT as we move towards the airport or towards Andheri — hostel 12, standing imposingly next to Renaissance hotel, braving the rain-storm blowing through the Powai lake. I sank back and the cabbie turned back to ask me… “Maam! Kya aap wapas nahin aa rahe hain? (Roughly: Maam won’t you come back?)” I smiled and said: “Nahin! Vijayaji!” The cab passed through Seepz and I just looked out searching unconsciously for some known faces and some long lost friends whom I had met long before joining PhD….

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